October 6, 2021 • 33 mins
The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
The fight for reproductive justice has become even more significant following a recent law that passed in Texas making abortions more restrictive. Now more than ever it’s important for us to be engaged in and supporting the efforts of those fighting for the rights of the most marginalized. Joining us today to share about her work in this space is Yamani Hernandez. Yamani and I chatted about what leadership looks like in this space at this moment, protecting your mental health while doing this work, what it looks like to do this work in the age of social media, and she shared ways for you to get involved in supporting this important movement.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kay Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a
weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the
small decisions we can make to become the best possible
(00:22):
versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr Joy hard and Bradford,
a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
at Therapy for Black Girls dot com. While I hope
you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it
(00:43):
is not meant to be a substitute for relationship with
a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much
for joining me from session to the Therapy for Black
Girls Podcast. We'll get right into the episode after a
(01:03):
word from our sponsors. The fight for reproductive justice has
become even more significant following a recent law that passed
in Texas making abortions more restrictive. Now more than ever,
(01:25):
it's important for us to be engaged in and supporting
the efforts of those fighting for the rights of those
most marginalized. Joining us today to share about her work
in this space is Yamani Hernandez. Yamani is a visionary
and strategic queer African American Buddhist leader committed to radical
compassion and healing justice. She became the executive director of
(01:47):
the National Network of Abortion Funds in May. During her tenure,
the organization has grown dramatically in size, framing, and capacity
to build cultural and political power with its organism, national
and individual members as they remove financial and logistical barriers
to abortion access by centering people who have abortions and
(02:08):
organizing at the intersections of racial, economic, and reproductive justice.
YOURMANI and I chatted about what leadership looks like in
this space at this moment, protecting your mental health while
doing this work, what it looks like to do this
work in the age of social media, and she shared
ways for you to get involved in supporting this important movement.
(02:28):
If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please
share it with us on social media using the hashtag
TVG in session. Here is our conversation. Thank you so
much for joining me today, your money. Yeah, very excited
to chat with you, So I wonder if you could
just start by telling us a little bit about your
role as the executive director of the National Network of
(02:51):
Abortion Funds and how being black and queer has shaped
your experience. In this position, I lead a national network
which of grassroots organizations. There's eighty three members across the
country who we like to say or make the legal
right to abortion actually possible. So they help pay for
people's abortions, They help get rides, child care, housing, hotel stays,
(03:16):
do less support all of the things it takes to
help people get to care. And so in my role,
I am a spokesperson. I am a lead strategist, thing
about organizational development, infrastructure and how to support this network
of eighty three members, and to the other part about
(03:37):
what it's been like to be black and queer. In
this role, I think blackness and queerness are not a monolith.
And I think that has been clear to me repeatedly,
over and over again. Sometimes they have unexpected opinions for
what people think a black person or queer person or
a black queer person is supposed to have. And I
(03:59):
think I've learned just that the duties of my job
and my employer are not the only responsibilities that I have.
But also there's so many expectations, like from my own community,
people who look like me and people who have identify
with my life experience and my lived experiences that it
adds another layer to my responsibility about who I'm accountable
(04:19):
to and when and how. So it's adds a little extra,
little extra to the role. Yeah, and I wonder if
you could talk more about that, right, I mean, because
there is the job, but so much of your work
it sounds like it's heart centered and like really mission
focused in community focus, and it does add this other
layer of like direct accountability I think to the community
(04:42):
that you say you serve. So how do you feel
like you've been able to manage that additional layer of accountability. Yeah,
I mean it's been hard at sometimes and other times
we have had pretty proud moments. I'm the first black
person to lead this organization and it's nearly thirty year history.
I've been in my role for six years. When I came,
(05:03):
it was predominantly white folks on staff, and we have
pretty much a majority about people of color on staff now.
And I feel really proud about that, and not that
it's like something that I dictated, but I think it's
part of just like a culture change that has happened
at the organization, and I feel really proud of that.
I think there's other times where Yeah, I can be disappointing,
(05:26):
I guess because I think sometimes people think, oh, we
hire a black person, that means they're obviously going to
be like a racial justice expert, and you know they
will know how to do all the latest d E
I this then the other, and that that's not actually
my expertise. And I have my lived experience as a
black mama and you know, socialized as a black girl
(05:48):
growing up. But I don't have all of those skills.
So I can be disappointing to people what sometimes where
they thought that I was going to deliver something that
is not in my job description, but you know it's
just a womb like, oh no, she's black, so this
is going to happen. And yeah, I think that can
be some of that just tension. So I'd love to
(06:09):
hear you talk your many about what leadership looks like
at this moment in history, just fresh off the heels
of this ruling in Texas, and so I'm just wondering, like,
what leadership has looked like for you and what are
you envisioning and looking like going forward. Yeah, I love
that question because it is very active. It's very active
in my mind right now because I think most of
(06:30):
us are living through a period that we haven't seen
before in our lifetime as far as the restrictions, the
level of restrictions on a portion, And I mean, I'm
forty three pre road days, was before was pre me days,
I guess. But yeah, I mean I think there's this
pressure to like know the answers and to know how
to solve this, and there aren't any easy solutions and
(06:52):
it's a very horrible place that we're in. I think
there's always this tension between being a national leader and
we're in a network, so have literally eight D three organizations,
so there's leaders at all of those organizations as well,
and so I'm always trying to balance where do I
show up in my leadership at the national level and
where do I really pass the mic to our local
(07:14):
leaders are local state leaders who are closer to the
ground and who are closer to the solutions I think
that are going to be necessary. And so that's me
is really about sharing power and not thinking that there's one,
you know, singular charismatic leader that is going to have
all the answers. This is a group project. And so yeah,
(07:35):
that's hard to balance because sometimes I think in an emergency,
people are like, where's the somebody tell somebody just answer yeah, exactly, yeah.
And that's not how we're going to survive this, Uman.
The way we're going to survive this is gonna be
us all kind of lacking hands across the states, cities, neighborhoods, blocks,
(08:00):
And that is different. That's different than some of the
other times we've lived through, I guess so. So it's
just it's a lot more localized problem to solve in
the absence of federal and government solution that we should
be able to rely on at this point. And can
you talk a little bit about what this moment means,
(08:22):
particularly for black and brown and queer communities in terms
of like abortion rights and reproductive rights. How are you
thinking these communities are going to be most impacted. Well,
you know the age old saying that folks who can
afford abortion will always have a way to find it,
be able to get to it, whether it means flying
to other states, whether it means flying to other countries.
(08:43):
That's always happened in it will continue to happen. So
the people who are going to hit, you know, hardest
by this are the people who can't afford to do that,
and then this country, we know that economic suffering and
racism are inextricably linked, So that will be the people
who are most marginalized, the black people, the brown people,
with the folks who are undocumented and cannot travel the
(09:08):
same way that other folks can. People you know who
their gender identities are different than being collapsed into like
a binary of this person or that person, the sex
or that sex, the gender that gender, and so yeah,
it means being further criminalized, and which is something that
our communities are already dealing with, and so adding this
(09:29):
layer of also just being criminalized for being able to
actually access healthcare and itself is just it's it is infuriating, upsetting, uh, depressing,
all of those things. I mean, I'm always trying to
balance the resiliency narratives. I do like to talk about
(09:49):
the fact that we have always figured out what we
needed to do to take care of ourselves. I want
to always root for like our resilience, but I'm also
just like, when do we ever get to not be
strong and have to know everything and figure everything out
for ourselves? When do we have the support that we
need to not have to just be in survival mode,
(10:11):
and yeah, this is just one more time where we're
gonna be trying to figure it out on our own
without the systemic supports that we need. More from my
conversation with your money after the break, just given the
(10:32):
past eighteen months, it just has felt relentless, right, I mean,
we are trying to keep ourselves safe, keep our family safe,
trying not to get shot in the streets or unfairly targeted.
I think this ruling in Texas just felt like, oh
my gosh, like when do we get a break, When
can we come up for air in the pandemic that
(10:53):
we also have never seen before, where losses of childcare,
levels of exhaustion, losses of women. Before the pandemic started,
we had done so much work to build the capacity
of our membership that abortion funds were starting to be
able to fund more people than they ever had been before.
And then the pandemic hit, and then the call volume
(11:15):
for help doubled, and so then it's just like you said,
this relentless kind of circle of need and exhaustion. I
keep saying, one of the times that our capacity is
needed the most and we are wounded. I was working
twenty hours a week most of because school was happening
(11:37):
in the house and trying to do that and lead
the organization. And that has been a trend for a
lot of folks who have been caretaking and you know,
so it's been rough. Yeah. Yeah, So ant leads me
to my next question, just like how are you taking
care of yourself? Like how has your mental health been impacted?
You know, doing this work even before the pandemic, but
(11:59):
certainly right now. Like what kinds of things that you're
doing to take care of yourself? Yeah, well, I have
a regular therapy appointment. I also, I like to describe
myself as warm but boundaried, and I just don't there's
some things there's just hard limits that I've had to
have on. I can't work seven, I don't work on
the weekends, that don't work in the evenings. So more
(12:21):
I'm in boundary. I love that definition. What does that
mean to you? It means being friendly, being kind, but
also having limits and having standards. And so that means
that I am not available all the time to every person,
and it means that my values rule my decision making,
and so I'm not going to make decisions that I
(12:43):
can't live with and that I don't feel are an
integrity with who I am and what I believe. I
would be kind and I would be friendly, but I'm
not going to be pushed over and I'm not going
to just do whatever anybody wants me to do. M
And have you found that it's harder to do that
in times of mean maybe it always seems like a crisis, right,
but especially now after you know the Texas rulings, has
(13:05):
it been harder to stay boundary or more boundary? Yeah?
It has. I mean then there's like a guilt, you
know that comes with just being able to just being like,
I have to stop today. I have to stop right now.
I need to make dinner, I need to eat, I
need to take a walk. My dog's got to go out.
It is harder because you feel like, oh my god,
like this is this needs everything that I can give it.
(13:27):
But I also know that I start making mistakes when
I'm tired. I start not being as friendly when I'm tired.
So yeah, I'm like, let me take care of the basics. First.
I got off Twitter in because it was years of
people calling me a murderer, telling me that I should
be murdered. You know, I save a lot of those
(13:48):
things just because I'm like, well, if anything ever happens
to me, like, I want to have a record of
the people who openly called for that. Gave a speech
in sixteen in front of the Supreme Court, and so
my jumped on stage and tried to push me off.
So I stopped speaking in front of crowds after that.
There's just like, yeah, like balancing a need for visibility
and you know, sort of like showing strong leadership and
(14:12):
also making sure that I remain alive and intact in
terms of my mental health and spiritual wellness. It's a balance.
So I tried to cheat that really carefully, and I've
had a real shift in that since and going to
like impatient care. I remember there was like a statement
(14:32):
that one of the providers said that was just like
you have to organize your life around your recovery. And
that's really what I've tried to do is just create
the conditions that I felt when I had the most
support and care. Yeah, and it's not always popular for
for just like productivity, but it is. But it's making
(14:56):
sure that I'm here. You know, I'm glad you brought
the because it is something that I've heard like lots
of like highly visible black women talk about, like especially
doing the kind of work that you do, Like there
is a real dangerous and doing side to this work.
Until it sounds like you've been able to put some
things in place to really be able to, you know,
(15:17):
try to take care of yourself the best way that
you can. But it also feels like there's this struggle,
right because the work in some ways kind of requires
you to be highly visible. Yeah, it's been attention, to
be honest, I think we've shifted into this space where
like being on Twitter is almost like required in order
to build a platform or to be visible in a
(15:38):
certain way. And so yeah, I think that was a
really hard decision for me to like basically take myself
out of that space. But I also felt that there
was enough sort of like toxic aspects of it that
ended up being the right decision for me. And I'm
looking for other ways to be able to be visible,
whether it's blogging or writing a book things like that.
(16:02):
And how are you talking with the leaders that you
lead about like how to take care of their mental
health doing this work. Well, that's a great question we
have this afternoon a little leadership circle basically with some
of them members in our network that we haven't done
as often as I would have liked. It's hopefully a
space where we can talk about some of that and
(16:23):
just like I say, space for people to be able
to say that they're tired and here validation. I think
sometimes even when we can't solve the problem, we can
at least validate what people are feeling. And after a
lot of those bands, the band happened in Texas on
September one, there was a number of remember organizations that
decided to take a pause for a week or decided
(16:47):
to just regroup, and I did get like some frantic
questions from some other parties that were like, what's happening?
Why are people taking Gregg's? And I'm like, I support
them taking amp break. We have to have moments when
we pause. We can't just endlessly go without ever stopping.
I think Treasure from then Ministry has a quote about
(17:08):
how will we be able to experience liberation if we're
too tired to me to know what it feels like.
I hope to also validate our members taking the breaks
that they need to be able to regroup, reset replenish
in order to be able to give to the work. Yeah,
that is really important. And how have you been able
(17:29):
to deal with some of the hopelessness maybe for yourself
and for your leaders that sometimes comes with like this
heat after heat that feels relentless. Yeah. I think when
you work on an actual hotline, a helpline, when somebody's
calling and you're able to concretely get them the help
that they need, it's something that really chips away at
that hopelessness. And it's not something that I've done that
(17:52):
often from where I sit, but I have done it before.
And I also have helped with some like logistical aspects
of somebody trying to get to care And it gives
you just like a very concrete feeling of like I
am doing something, I am helping the situation was not
great and now it's better. And that's on a very
micro individual level. I think sometimes we talk about the
(18:15):
stuff in very theoretical ways, but yeah, when you are
actually talking to individual people and there texting you and
calling you and thanking you and saying like you changed
my life, I don't know what I've would have done
without your help. Those things, I think are what people
help people keep going, And that's what those are things
that helped me keep going for sure, because yeah, it
(18:38):
can if you just sort of give and you can't
give into the like hopelessness. That's what you know, the
anti choice folks want to maybe, so I'm not going
to give them that, but yeah, you just you have
to find the small places of sweetness to counteract like
all of the cruelty. Mm hmmm. So in addition to
(18:59):
your work as the executive director, you are also trained
as a doula. Can you tell us a little bit
more about like your training in it, like would inspired
you to do that and how that informs your work
as the executive director. Yeah, thank you for asking that.
I never get to talk about that. I don't. I
don't not like actively working as a tool right now,
but I have in the past. I went to doula
(19:21):
training when I was leading the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent
Health and we were doing work on youth sexual health
rights and identities, and we were thinking about starting a
youth DULA program because we did a lot of work
to support young parents and we were just trying to
think of what different things will be supportive and a
few of us decided, well, we can't start the program
(19:42):
without doing the training ourselves first, and so I went
to the training in twenty It was at the time
I see TC International Center for a Traditional child Bearing.
I think they've changed their name since then, but it
was based like a culturally specific Black focused DULA training program, which, man,
(20:06):
it was really life changing for me. I've given birth
twice and I had not thought critically about those experiences
and until I went through DULA training and thought about
where I had support and where I didn't have support.
And there's a group here called Chicago Volunteer Dulas, and
I volunteered with them to do just been on call
(20:26):
DULA for people who were like in labor and needed help.
And it was again one of those things that just
really fed me and filled me up to know, like
to concretely like go to somebody's birth, stand by their side,
you know, it's just like accompaniment, holding space for somebody.
And that is a lot of what abortion funds do
as well. So I think that also, I always, even
(20:49):
though my work is very focused on abortion, um like
operating from a reproductive justice framework, it's about more than abortion,
thinking about birth, parenting, all of the variances that make
up our reproductive lives, and I try to cut at
least mentally, those things are all connected to me, and
so I try to remember that in my work and
(21:12):
remember the individual people that I'm working with. M more
from my conversation with your MONTI after the break, can
you give us a breakdown of what people are talking about?
What do we mean when we say reproductive justice. Reproductive
(21:35):
justice is a framework that was started by black women
in the early nineties that is really linking reproductive rights
with social justice and complicating the quote unquote pro choice
narrative and say like, our choices are political, actually, and
our choices are also impacted by our societal experience and
(21:55):
our access to justice. So it's not just a bad
a portion, but the right to have a child, the
right to not have a child, and also the right
to parent the children that you have without interference. We
want our children to grow up, you know, as a
mom of black sons, you know, I'm just like, yeah,
I want them to be able to grow up. And
I also see the police violence as an issue that
(22:19):
impacts whether people decide to parent at all. And so
you can't just say, like abortion is for people who
don't like children or something like that. It's not that simple.
Most of the people who have abortions are already parenting, so,
you know, and don't have the resources that they need
or the supports that they need to have the families
that they want to have. So reproductive justice is a
(22:42):
broader framework that is about trying to ensure that all
of us have the rights and resources to decide if, when,
and how we have a family. And I think that
that's helpful to hear because I think sometimes people here
reproductive justice and the only think abortion, right when there
are so many other pieces to the puzzle. Yeah, and
they're related. I had a miscarriage in and I started
(23:06):
to pay attention more to about like miscarriage narratives and abortion,
and I realized like, also, oh, this is what happened
when I was in the hospital. I got my discharged
paperwork and it said abortion on it, and I was like, oh,
I didn't have an abortion. I had a miscarriage. Then
I just just sent me down this spiral of like, oh,
like it actually is technically called an abortion, but because
(23:31):
that word has been so politicized, like we don't yeah,
we can't talk about pregnancy loss without or like the
ending of pregnancy without it being this supercharged conversation. And
I started to realize that there was these hospitals that
folks would be going for miscarriage management care and being
(23:52):
turned away because the help that they needed is very
similar to what it takes to perform an aboard s.
So yeah, you can't really separate like some people be like, well,
you know, a miscarriage somebody didn't means in their pregnancy,
and it's like, yeah, okay, but they're still dealing with
the same barriers to care that people who intended to
(24:13):
determinate their pregnancies. And that's not fair that like everybody
should have access to the same level care and many
in the same thing with birth, all of these Black
women who are the mortality right, the Black women who
are dying in childbirth, and you can't separate that from
whether you decide to even carry your pregnancy to term,
like finding out you're pregnant, and then also reconciling how
(24:36):
many Black women are dying from childbirth. People are like
I don't want to do that, no, thank you. So
it's all connected and related, and I don't think we
get to talk about those connections enough, and always conversations
end up being like very siloed, and so I really
welcome opportunities to talk about it all together. Are there
(24:56):
other things that you feel like are left out of
this conversation or these conversations that you would love for
people to know. Is there an additional nuance that is
often left out that you think, oh, this could be
helpful for people. I think that we definitely as society
are starting to gain more nuanced and talking about sex
and gender, but we still have a long way to go.
(25:17):
I feel really ambivalent about my own gender, and I
found out after a long time of like having this
existential dealing or thinking about it, that I am intersex.
I sometimes feel frustrated in the conversations about like reproductive
(25:37):
health rights and justice because it is so binary and
how we talk about it, and there's been sometimes debates
over like whether we can use support people versus women,
or recognizing that people of all sexes and people of
all genders are are having abortions, are having pregnancies, and
so like more nuanced about that. And I think that
(25:57):
that leads me to the other thing that I wish
we talked more about, which is just like sex edge
because there's just so much ignorance. I don't mean that
in like a pejorative way. I just mean like people
just don't know. They've never been taught. But I don't
think that's by accident. But yeah, we don't have comprehensive
sex ed in this country is widely variable from state
(26:19):
to state, city to city, and a lot of these
politicians and lawmakers that are making decisions don't even know
how the body works. You know. That's where you get
people saying stuff like, you know, politicians saying stuff like, oh,
if somebody is raped, then the body just shuts down pregnancy,
it doesn't happen. Like you're just like, what are you talking?
(26:39):
What where did you get that? Yeah, there's some really
you know, great organizations that are putting a lot of
work into sex ed, but I think it should just
be a lot more universal priority and thinking about young people.
The anti choice folks really use young people unfortunately as weapon.
(27:01):
They trot young people out, They take them on the
field trips and take them outside of apportion clinics and
have them stand outside shaming the people going into those clinics,
you know, by the dozens, by the hundreds. Sometimes they
have will take like a whole camp, a whole summer camp,
and just and that's their activity. I think that's terrible
the way that they are politicizing young people in that way.
(27:23):
But I also think there's just a huge opportunity for
us to like counteract that and teaching young people about
their bodies and talking honestly about sexuality, gender reproduction, all
of the things. And yeah, a lot of us are
afraid to do that. So I just think I would
like to see more sex education. Yeah, it sounds like
(27:47):
it definitely would help to cut down on at least
some of the UM confusion, right, and like you mentioned
the ignorance that people just really don't have the correct
information sometimes. Yeah. So you mentioned that the need and
the demand for community services really increased during the pandemic,
even while you know, those of you doing the work
have really filed exhausted. What would you say that organizations
(28:10):
need most right now like that are doing this work. Yeah,
we need money, people and UM legal support. Honestly, those
are the biggest things. UM, we need money because there's
a lot more. What I should say, our members need
money because when you have a band like the one
(28:31):
in Texas, that means people need to leave the state,
and even like driving, so the next states, those most
immediate states can be overwhelmed. So sometimes it's even more
prudent to get on a plane and fly to Illinois
or somewhere else, and so that that's more expensive, but
that's more expensive than somebody giving a ride. So I've
(28:53):
been hearing that they expect five times more, they need
five times more than what they they have been giving
away to support that need. And then people just case
management and volunteers are really important. But I don't think
people know that a lot of abortion funds are volunteer run,
so that that's something that has been shifting over time
(29:15):
with a lot of effort and fund raising to try
to get people to be paid for their labor. We
six years ago we had of our members had paid staff.
Now about to have at least one paid staff. But
still there's like a lot that still just have only volunteers.
And so volunteer management and being able to also have
(29:37):
enough people to train people, to be able to let
people rest is important. Like I said, this sort of
is the sort of like being able to relay pass
the bouton is somebody Okay, you take it, I'm gonna
arrest you take it, and I'll take it back. And
then Yeah, I just think that the legal support is
really important because all of this criminalization that is happening,
(29:58):
and there's there's a repro legal defense line that is
created out of if when how an organization in our movement,
which is going to be really important. I will add
one more thing, which is just like talking about the
issues and not causing more harm by talking about them.
I think immediately after the bands, people were using phrases
(30:19):
like Texas Taliman and talking about the Handmaid's Tale and
all of this, and we don't have to make references
like to to folks outside of the country like we
get if anything, we give reference to KKK and a
white supremacist that make these laws what they are. But yeah,
(30:41):
I think just like not adding more stigma to the
issue and talking about it in a way that centers
the people most impacted, which like we talked about earlier,
where are like black and brown folks and people who
are struggling to make ends meet. So what advice would
you have for young people who are wanting to get
involved in the reproductive justice movement? Well, first of all,
(31:03):
come on, come on. There's lots of opportunity for sure,
But I think also there is a new breed of
like worker quote unquote, where like people are not willing
to sacrifice their entire lives for their employment. And I
really support that. So my advice to young leaders is,
(31:23):
don't collapse yourself into your job. Make space for the
other things that you care about and the other parts
of you that are important, and yeah, be a whole person.
Give what you can give, but don't give everything away. Yeah,
that sounds very important. So where can people find more
information your money? You know, if they want to volunteer
(31:44):
or donate or get involved in any of the organizations,
where should they go? Yeah, our website is abortion Funds
dot org and we have a tab called need an Abortion.
If you click on there, there's a list of every
abortion fund in every state. So you can go to
our website to find all of the abortion funds. You
can find one that's local to you, You can donate,
you can volunteer. All the affirmation is there all of
(32:06):
our socials. It's the same across Twitter and Instagram. Abortion
Funds basically at Abortion Funds and Facebook, National Network of
abortion Funds perfect Well, thank you so much for sharing
this with us. I appreciate it. Sure, I appreciate you
having me. I'm so glad your Monty was able to
share her exercise with us today. To learn more about
(32:29):
her work or to check out the resources she shared,
visit the show notes at Therapy for Black Girls dot
com slash Session too to eight, and don't forget to
text two of your girls and tell them to check
out this episode as well. If you're looking for a
therapist in your area, be sure to check out our
therapist directory at Therapy for lack Girls dot com slash directory.
(32:50):
And if you want to continue digging into this topic
or just be in community with other sisters, come on
over and join us in the Sister Circle. It's our
cozy corner of the Internet design and just for black women.
You can join us at community dot Therapy for Black
Girls dot com. Thank you all so much for joining
me again this week. I look forward to continue in
this conversation with you all real soon. Take it care
Kay Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a
weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the
small decisions we can make to become the best possible
(00:22):
versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr Joy hard and Bradford,
a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
at Therapy for Black Girls dot com. While I hope
you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it
(00:43):
is not meant to be a substitute for relationship with
a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much
for joining me from session to the Therapy for Black
Girls Podcast. We'll get right into the episode after a
(01:03):
word from our sponsors. The fight for reproductive justice has
become even more significant following a recent law that passed
in Texas making abortions more restrictive. Now more than ever,
(01:25):
it's important for us to be engaged in and supporting
the efforts of those fighting for the rights of those
most marginalized. Joining us today to share about her work
in this space is Yamani Hernandez. Yamani is a visionary
and strategic queer African American Buddhist leader committed to radical
compassion and healing justice. She became the executive director of
(01:47):
the National Network of Abortion Funds in May. During her tenure,
the organization has grown dramatically in size, framing, and capacity
to build cultural and political power with its organism, national
and individual members as they remove financial and logistical barriers
to abortion access by centering people who have abortions and
(02:08):
organizing at the intersections of racial, economic, and reproductive justice.
YOURMANI and I chatted about what leadership looks like in
this space at this moment, protecting your mental health while
doing this work, what it looks like to do this
work in the age of social media, and she shared
ways for you to get involved in supporting this important movement.
(02:28):
If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please
share it with us on social media using the hashtag
TVG in session. Here is our conversation. Thank you so
much for joining me today, your money. Yeah, very excited
to chat with you, So I wonder if you could
just start by telling us a little bit about your
role as the executive director of the National Network of
(02:51):
Abortion Funds and how being black and queer has shaped
your experience. In this position, I lead a national network
which of grassroots organizations. There's eighty three members across the
country who we like to say or make the legal
right to abortion actually possible. So they help pay for
people's abortions, They help get rides, child care, housing, hotel stays,
(03:16):
do less support all of the things it takes to
help people get to care. And so in my role,
I am a spokesperson. I am a lead strategist, thing
about organizational development, infrastructure and how to support this network
of eighty three members, and to the other part about
(03:37):
what it's been like to be black and queer. In
this role, I think blackness and queerness are not a monolith.
And I think that has been clear to me repeatedly,
over and over again. Sometimes they have unexpected opinions for
what people think a black person or queer person or
a black queer person is supposed to have. And I
(03:59):
think I've learned just that the duties of my job
and my employer are not the only responsibilities that I have.
But also there's so many expectations, like from my own community,
people who look like me and people who have identify
with my life experience and my lived experiences that it
adds another layer to my responsibility about who I'm accountable
(04:19):
to and when and how. So it's adds a little extra,
little extra to the role. Yeah, and I wonder if
you could talk more about that, right, I mean, because
there is the job, but so much of your work
it sounds like it's heart centered and like really mission
focused in community focus, and it does add this other
layer of like direct accountability I think to the community
(04:42):
that you say you serve. So how do you feel
like you've been able to manage that additional layer of accountability. Yeah,
I mean it's been hard at sometimes and other times
we have had pretty proud moments. I'm the first black
person to lead this organization and it's nearly thirty year history.
I've been in my role for six years. When I came,
(05:03):
it was predominantly white folks on staff, and we have
pretty much a majority about people of color on staff now.
And I feel really proud about that, and not that
it's like something that I dictated, but I think it's
part of just like a culture change that has happened
at the organization, and I feel really proud of that.
I think there's other times where Yeah, I can be disappointing,
(05:26):
I guess because I think sometimes people think, oh, we
hire a black person, that means they're obviously going to
be like a racial justice expert, and you know they
will know how to do all the latest d E
I this then the other, and that that's not actually
my expertise. And I have my lived experience as a
black mama and you know, socialized as a black girl
(05:48):
growing up. But I don't have all of those skills.
So I can be disappointing to people what sometimes where
they thought that I was going to deliver something that
is not in my job description, but you know it's
just a womb like, oh no, she's black, so this
is going to happen. And yeah, I think that can
be some of that just tension. So I'd love to
(06:09):
hear you talk your many about what leadership looks like
at this moment in history, just fresh off the heels
of this ruling in Texas, and so I'm just wondering, like,
what leadership has looked like for you and what are
you envisioning and looking like going forward. Yeah, I love
that question because it is very active. It's very active
in my mind right now because I think most of
(06:30):
us are living through a period that we haven't seen
before in our lifetime as far as the restrictions, the
level of restrictions on a portion, And I mean, I'm
forty three pre road days, was before was pre me days,
I guess. But yeah, I mean I think there's this
pressure to like know the answers and to know how
to solve this, and there aren't any easy solutions and
(06:52):
it's a very horrible place that we're in. I think
there's always this tension between being a national leader and
we're in a network, so have literally eight D three organizations,
so there's leaders at all of those organizations as well,
and so I'm always trying to balance where do I
show up in my leadership at the national level and
where do I really pass the mic to our local
(07:14):
leaders are local state leaders who are closer to the
ground and who are closer to the solutions I think
that are going to be necessary. And so that's me
is really about sharing power and not thinking that there's one,
you know, singular charismatic leader that is going to have
all the answers. This is a group project. And so yeah,
(07:35):
that's hard to balance because sometimes I think in an emergency,
people are like, where's the somebody tell somebody just answer yeah, exactly, yeah.
And that's not how we're going to survive this, Uman.
The way we're going to survive this is gonna be
us all kind of lacking hands across the states, cities, neighborhoods, blocks,
(08:00):
And that is different. That's different than some of the
other times we've lived through, I guess so. So it's
just it's a lot more localized problem to solve in
the absence of federal and government solution that we should
be able to rely on at this point. And can
you talk a little bit about what this moment means,
(08:22):
particularly for black and brown and queer communities in terms
of like abortion rights and reproductive rights. How are you
thinking these communities are going to be most impacted. Well,
you know the age old saying that folks who can
afford abortion will always have a way to find it,
be able to get to it, whether it means flying
to other states, whether it means flying to other countries.
(08:43):
That's always happened in it will continue to happen. So
the people who are going to hit, you know, hardest
by this are the people who can't afford to do that,
and then this country, we know that economic suffering and
racism are inextricably linked, So that will be the people
who are most marginalized, the black people, the brown people,
with the folks who are undocumented and cannot travel the
(09:08):
same way that other folks can. People you know who
their gender identities are different than being collapsed into like
a binary of this person or that person, the sex
or that sex, the gender that gender, and so yeah,
it means being further criminalized, and which is something that
our communities are already dealing with, and so adding this
(09:29):
layer of also just being criminalized for being able to
actually access healthcare and itself is just it's it is infuriating, upsetting, uh, depressing,
all of those things. I mean, I'm always trying to
balance the resiliency narratives. I do like to talk about
(09:49):
the fact that we have always figured out what we
needed to do to take care of ourselves. I want
to always root for like our resilience, but I'm also
just like, when do we ever get to not be
strong and have to know everything and figure everything out
for ourselves? When do we have the support that we
need to not have to just be in survival mode,
(10:11):
and yeah, this is just one more time where we're
gonna be trying to figure it out on our own
without the systemic supports that we need. More from my
conversation with your money after the break, just given the
(10:32):
past eighteen months, it just has felt relentless, right, I mean,
we are trying to keep ourselves safe, keep our family safe,
trying not to get shot in the streets or unfairly targeted.
I think this ruling in Texas just felt like, oh
my gosh, like when do we get a break, When
can we come up for air in the pandemic that
(10:53):
we also have never seen before, where losses of childcare,
levels of exhaustion, losses of women. Before the pandemic started,
we had done so much work to build the capacity
of our membership that abortion funds were starting to be
able to fund more people than they ever had been before.
And then the pandemic hit, and then the call volume
(11:15):
for help doubled, and so then it's just like you said,
this relentless kind of circle of need and exhaustion. I
keep saying, one of the times that our capacity is
needed the most and we are wounded. I was working
twenty hours a week most of because school was happening
(11:37):
in the house and trying to do that and lead
the organization. And that has been a trend for a
lot of folks who have been caretaking and you know,
so it's been rough. Yeah. Yeah, So ant leads me
to my next question, just like how are you taking
care of yourself? Like how has your mental health been impacted?
You know, doing this work even before the pandemic, but
(11:59):
certainly right now. Like what kinds of things that you're
doing to take care of yourself? Yeah, well, I have
a regular therapy appointment. I also, I like to describe
myself as warm but boundaried, and I just don't there's
some things there's just hard limits that I've had to
have on. I can't work seven, I don't work on
the weekends, that don't work in the evenings. So more
(12:21):
I'm in boundary. I love that definition. What does that
mean to you? It means being friendly, being kind, but
also having limits and having standards. And so that means
that I am not available all the time to every person,
and it means that my values rule my decision making,
and so I'm not going to make decisions that I
(12:43):
can't live with and that I don't feel are an
integrity with who I am and what I believe. I
would be kind and I would be friendly, but I'm
not going to be pushed over and I'm not going
to just do whatever anybody wants me to do. M
And have you found that it's harder to do that
in times of mean maybe it always seems like a crisis, right,
but especially now after you know the Texas rulings, has
(13:05):
it been harder to stay boundary or more boundary? Yeah?
It has. I mean then there's like a guilt, you
know that comes with just being able to just being like,
I have to stop today. I have to stop right now.
I need to make dinner, I need to eat, I
need to take a walk. My dog's got to go out.
It is harder because you feel like, oh my god,
like this is this needs everything that I can give it.
(13:27):
But I also know that I start making mistakes when
I'm tired. I start not being as friendly when I'm tired.
So yeah, I'm like, let me take care of the basics. First.
I got off Twitter in because it was years of
people calling me a murderer, telling me that I should
be murdered. You know, I save a lot of those
(13:48):
things just because I'm like, well, if anything ever happens
to me, like, I want to have a record of
the people who openly called for that. Gave a speech
in sixteen in front of the Supreme Court, and so
my jumped on stage and tried to push me off.
So I stopped speaking in front of crowds after that.
There's just like, yeah, like balancing a need for visibility
and you know, sort of like showing strong leadership and
(14:12):
also making sure that I remain alive and intact in
terms of my mental health and spiritual wellness. It's a balance.
So I tried to cheat that really carefully, and I've
had a real shift in that since and going to
like impatient care. I remember there was like a statement
(14:32):
that one of the providers said that was just like
you have to organize your life around your recovery. And
that's really what I've tried to do is just create
the conditions that I felt when I had the most
support and care. Yeah, and it's not always popular for
for just like productivity, but it is. But it's making
(14:56):
sure that I'm here. You know, I'm glad you brought
the because it is something that I've heard like lots
of like highly visible black women talk about, like especially
doing the kind of work that you do, Like there
is a real dangerous and doing side to this work.
Until it sounds like you've been able to put some
things in place to really be able to, you know,
(15:17):
try to take care of yourself the best way that
you can. But it also feels like there's this struggle,
right because the work in some ways kind of requires
you to be highly visible. Yeah, it's been attention, to
be honest, I think we've shifted into this space where
like being on Twitter is almost like required in order
to build a platform or to be visible in a
(15:38):
certain way. And so yeah, I think that was a
really hard decision for me to like basically take myself
out of that space. But I also felt that there
was enough sort of like toxic aspects of it that
ended up being the right decision for me. And I'm
looking for other ways to be able to be visible,
whether it's blogging or writing a book things like that.
(16:02):
And how are you talking with the leaders that you
lead about like how to take care of their mental
health doing this work. Well, that's a great question we
have this afternoon a little leadership circle basically with some
of them members in our network that we haven't done
as often as I would have liked. It's hopefully a
space where we can talk about some of that and
(16:23):
just like I say, space for people to be able
to say that they're tired and here validation. I think
sometimes even when we can't solve the problem, we can
at least validate what people are feeling. And after a
lot of those bands, the band happened in Texas on
September one, there was a number of remember organizations that
decided to take a pause for a week or decided
(16:47):
to just regroup, and I did get like some frantic
questions from some other parties that were like, what's happening?
Why are people taking Gregg's? And I'm like, I support
them taking amp break. We have to have moments when
we pause. We can't just endlessly go without ever stopping.
I think Treasure from then Ministry has a quote about
(17:08):
how will we be able to experience liberation if we're
too tired to me to know what it feels like.
I hope to also validate our members taking the breaks
that they need to be able to regroup, reset replenish
in order to be able to give to the work. Yeah,
that is really important. And how have you been able
(17:29):
to deal with some of the hopelessness maybe for yourself
and for your leaders that sometimes comes with like this
heat after heat that feels relentless. Yeah. I think when
you work on an actual hotline, a helpline, when somebody's
calling and you're able to concretely get them the help
that they need, it's something that really chips away at
that hopelessness. And it's not something that I've done that
(17:52):
often from where I sit, but I have done it before.
And I also have helped with some like logistical aspects
of somebody trying to get to care And it gives
you just like a very concrete feeling of like I
am doing something, I am helping the situation was not
great and now it's better. And that's on a very
micro individual level. I think sometimes we talk about the
(18:15):
stuff in very theoretical ways, but yeah, when you are
actually talking to individual people and there texting you and
calling you and thanking you and saying like you changed
my life, I don't know what I've would have done
without your help. Those things, I think are what people
help people keep going, And that's what those are things
that helped me keep going for sure, because yeah, it
(18:38):
can if you just sort of give and you can't
give into the like hopelessness. That's what you know, the
anti choice folks want to maybe, so I'm not going
to give them that, but yeah, you just you have
to find the small places of sweetness to counteract like
all of the cruelty. Mm hmmm. So in addition to
(18:59):
your work as the executive director, you are also trained
as a doula. Can you tell us a little bit
more about like your training in it, like would inspired
you to do that and how that informs your work
as the executive director. Yeah, thank you for asking that.
I never get to talk about that. I don't. I
don't not like actively working as a tool right now,
but I have in the past. I went to doula
(19:21):
training when I was leading the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent
Health and we were doing work on youth sexual health
rights and identities, and we were thinking about starting a
youth DULA program because we did a lot of work
to support young parents and we were just trying to
think of what different things will be supportive and a
few of us decided, well, we can't start the program
(19:42):
without doing the training ourselves first, and so I went
to the training in twenty It was at the time
I see TC International Center for a Traditional child Bearing.
I think they've changed their name since then, but it
was based like a culturally specific Black focused DULA training program, which, man,
(20:06):
it was really life changing for me. I've given birth
twice and I had not thought critically about those experiences
and until I went through DULA training and thought about
where I had support and where I didn't have support.
And there's a group here called Chicago Volunteer Dulas, and
I volunteered with them to do just been on call
(20:26):
DULA for people who were like in labor and needed help.
And it was again one of those things that just
really fed me and filled me up to know, like
to concretely like go to somebody's birth, stand by their side,
you know, it's just like accompaniment, holding space for somebody.
And that is a lot of what abortion funds do
as well. So I think that also, I always, even
(20:49):
though my work is very focused on abortion, um like
operating from a reproductive justice framework, it's about more than abortion,
thinking about birth, parenting, all of the variances that make
up our reproductive lives, and I try to cut at
least mentally, those things are all connected to me, and
so I try to remember that in my work and
(21:12):
remember the individual people that I'm working with. M more
from my conversation with your MONTI after the break, can
you give us a breakdown of what people are talking about?
What do we mean when we say reproductive justice. Reproductive
(21:35):
justice is a framework that was started by black women
in the early nineties that is really linking reproductive rights
with social justice and complicating the quote unquote pro choice
narrative and say like, our choices are political, actually, and
our choices are also impacted by our societal experience and
(21:55):
our access to justice. So it's not just a bad
a portion, but the right to have a child, the
right to not have a child, and also the right
to parent the children that you have without interference. We
want our children to grow up, you know, as a
mom of black sons, you know, I'm just like, yeah,
I want them to be able to grow up. And
I also see the police violence as an issue that
(22:19):
impacts whether people decide to parent at all. And so
you can't just say, like abortion is for people who
don't like children or something like that. It's not that simple.
Most of the people who have abortions are already parenting, so,
you know, and don't have the resources that they need
or the supports that they need to have the families
that they want to have. So reproductive justice is a
(22:42):
broader framework that is about trying to ensure that all
of us have the rights and resources to decide if, when,
and how we have a family. And I think that
that's helpful to hear because I think sometimes people here
reproductive justice and the only think abortion, right when there
are so many other pieces to the puzzle. Yeah, and
they're related. I had a miscarriage in and I started
(23:06):
to pay attention more to about like miscarriage narratives and abortion,
and I realized like, also, oh, this is what happened
when I was in the hospital. I got my discharged
paperwork and it said abortion on it, and I was like, oh,
I didn't have an abortion. I had a miscarriage. Then
I just just sent me down this spiral of like, oh,
like it actually is technically called an abortion, but because
(23:31):
that word has been so politicized, like we don't yeah,
we can't talk about pregnancy loss without or like the
ending of pregnancy without it being this supercharged conversation. And
I started to realize that there was these hospitals that
folks would be going for miscarriage management care and being
(23:52):
turned away because the help that they needed is very
similar to what it takes to perform an aboard s.
So yeah, you can't really separate like some people be like, well,
you know, a miscarriage somebody didn't means in their pregnancy,
and it's like, yeah, okay, but they're still dealing with
the same barriers to care that people who intended to
(24:13):
determinate their pregnancies. And that's not fair that like everybody
should have access to the same level care and many
in the same thing with birth, all of these Black
women who are the mortality right, the Black women who
are dying in childbirth, and you can't separate that from
whether you decide to even carry your pregnancy to term,
like finding out you're pregnant, and then also reconciling how
(24:36):
many Black women are dying from childbirth. People are like
I don't want to do that, no, thank you. So
it's all connected and related, and I don't think we
get to talk about those connections enough, and always conversations
end up being like very siloed, and so I really
welcome opportunities to talk about it all together. Are there
(24:56):
other things that you feel like are left out of
this conversation or these conversations that you would love for
people to know. Is there an additional nuance that is
often left out that you think, oh, this could be
helpful for people. I think that we definitely as society
are starting to gain more nuanced and talking about sex
and gender, but we still have a long way to go.
(25:17):
I feel really ambivalent about my own gender, and I
found out after a long time of like having this
existential dealing or thinking about it, that I am intersex.
I sometimes feel frustrated in the conversations about like reproductive
(25:37):
health rights and justice because it is so binary and
how we talk about it, and there's been sometimes debates
over like whether we can use support people versus women,
or recognizing that people of all sexes and people of
all genders are are having abortions, are having pregnancies, and
so like more nuanced about that. And I think that
(25:57):
that leads me to the other thing that I wish
we talked more about, which is just like sex edge
because there's just so much ignorance. I don't mean that
in like a pejorative way. I just mean like people
just don't know. They've never been taught. But I don't
think that's by accident. But yeah, we don't have comprehensive
sex ed in this country is widely variable from state
(26:19):
to state, city to city, and a lot of these
politicians and lawmakers that are making decisions don't even know
how the body works. You know. That's where you get
people saying stuff like, you know, politicians saying stuff like, oh,
if somebody is raped, then the body just shuts down pregnancy,
it doesn't happen. Like you're just like, what are you talking?
(26:39):
What where did you get that? Yeah, there's some really
you know, great organizations that are putting a lot of
work into sex ed, but I think it should just
be a lot more universal priority and thinking about young people.
The anti choice folks really use young people unfortunately as weapon.
(27:01):
They trot young people out, They take them on the
field trips and take them outside of apportion clinics and
have them stand outside shaming the people going into those clinics,
you know, by the dozens, by the hundreds. Sometimes they
have will take like a whole camp, a whole summer camp,
and just and that's their activity. I think that's terrible
the way that they are politicizing young people in that way.
(27:23):
But I also think there's just a huge opportunity for
us to like counteract that and teaching young people about
their bodies and talking honestly about sexuality, gender reproduction, all
of the things. And yeah, a lot of us are
afraid to do that. So I just think I would
like to see more sex education. Yeah, it sounds like
(27:47):
it definitely would help to cut down on at least
some of the UM confusion, right, and like you mentioned
the ignorance that people just really don't have the correct
information sometimes. Yeah. So you mentioned that the need and
the demand for community services really increased during the pandemic,
even while you know, those of you doing the work
have really filed exhausted. What would you say that organizations
(28:10):
need most right now like that are doing this work. Yeah,
we need money, people and UM legal support. Honestly, those
are the biggest things. UM, we need money because there's
a lot more. What I should say, our members need
money because when you have a band like the one
(28:31):
in Texas, that means people need to leave the state,
and even like driving, so the next states, those most
immediate states can be overwhelmed. So sometimes it's even more
prudent to get on a plane and fly to Illinois
or somewhere else, and so that that's more expensive, but
that's more expensive than somebody giving a ride. So I've
(28:53):
been hearing that they expect five times more, they need
five times more than what they they have been giving
away to support that need. And then people just case
management and volunteers are really important. But I don't think
people know that a lot of abortion funds are volunteer run,
so that that's something that has been shifting over time
(29:15):
with a lot of effort and fund raising to try
to get people to be paid for their labor. We
six years ago we had of our members had paid staff.
Now about to have at least one paid staff. But
still there's like a lot that still just have only volunteers.
And so volunteer management and being able to also have
(29:37):
enough people to train people, to be able to let
people rest is important. Like I said, this sort of
is the sort of like being able to relay pass
the bouton is somebody Okay, you take it, I'm gonna
arrest you take it, and I'll take it back. And
then Yeah, I just think that the legal support is
really important because all of this criminalization that is happening,
(29:58):
and there's there's a repro legal defense line that is
created out of if when how an organization in our movement,
which is going to be really important. I will add
one more thing, which is just like talking about the
issues and not causing more harm by talking about them.
I think immediately after the bands, people were using phrases
(30:19):
like Texas Taliman and talking about the Handmaid's Tale and
all of this, and we don't have to make references
like to to folks outside of the country like we
get if anything, we give reference to KKK and a
white supremacist that make these laws what they are. But yeah,
(30:41):
I think just like not adding more stigma to the
issue and talking about it in a way that centers
the people most impacted, which like we talked about earlier,
where are like black and brown folks and people who
are struggling to make ends meet. So what advice would
you have for young people who are wanting to get
involved in the reproductive justice movement? Well, first of all,
(31:03):
come on, come on. There's lots of opportunity for sure,
But I think also there is a new breed of
like worker quote unquote, where like people are not willing
to sacrifice their entire lives for their employment. And I
really support that. So my advice to young leaders is,
(31:23):
don't collapse yourself into your job. Make space for the
other things that you care about and the other parts
of you that are important, and yeah, be a whole person.
Give what you can give, but don't give everything away. Yeah,
that sounds very important. So where can people find more
information your money? You know, if they want to volunteer
(31:44):
or donate or get involved in any of the organizations,
where should they go? Yeah, our website is abortion Funds
dot org and we have a tab called need an Abortion.
If you click on there, there's a list of every
abortion fund in every state. So you can go to
our website to find all of the abortion funds. You
can find one that's local to you, You can donate,
you can volunteer. All the affirmation is there all of
(32:06):
our socials. It's the same across Twitter and Instagram. Abortion
Funds basically at Abortion Funds and Facebook, National Network of
abortion Funds perfect Well, thank you so much for sharing
this with us. I appreciate it. Sure, I appreciate you
having me. I'm so glad your Monty was able to
share her exercise with us today. To learn more about
(32:29):
her work or to check out the resources she shared,
visit the show notes at Therapy for Black Girls dot
com slash Session too to eight, and don't forget to
text two of your girls and tell them to check
out this episode as well. If you're looking for a
therapist in your area, be sure to check out our
therapist directory at Therapy for lack Girls dot com slash directory.
(32:50):
And if you want to continue digging into this topic
or just be in community with other sisters, come on
over and join us in the Sister Circle. It's our
cozy corner of the Internet design and just for black women.
You can join us at community dot Therapy for Black
Girls dot com. Thank you all so much for joining
me again this week. I look forward to continue in
this conversation with you all real soon. Take it care
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